Boise aviator clocks nine bright objects over the Cascades at 1,200 miles per hour

The skies over the Cascade Range were clear on June 24, 1947, when Kenneth Arnold, a Boise businessman and experienced aviator, detoured from a routine flight to search for a downed Marine Corps C-46 near Mount Rainier. Flying at 9,200 feet, he noticed nine bright, flashing objects traveling in a long chain at what he timed — using the interval between Mount Rainier and Mount Adams — at roughly 1,200 miles per hour. Arnold told a reporter they moved like saucers skipping on water. The press did the rest: "flying saucer" entered the language that week, and it has never left…